This is why Zhang Long would’ve loved to have some time to train and figure out what he could do, but no dice.

Not only was he faster and stronger, but the world also slowed proportionately to accommodate him. It was as if it took an entire ten seconds for a nearby person to draw their sword, by the time that man was done Zhang Long had already knocked them over and moved on to their neighbor.

These people were only lightly armed with swords and spears, though if they were somehow magical or enchanted, they might end up hurting him.

So it was best to break their arms, so that they couldn’t draw their weapons, and also one of their legs, so they couldn’t stumble away.

One didn’t need to go that far though honestly, merely breaking their wrists and their feet was good enough - though it wasn’t until he was at his third victim that this occurred to Tang Ze.

Zhang Long was not sitting idle while this happened - he did not have any weapons on him, but was able to grab a staff which its unfortunate owner had fortunately dropped for him.

Li Wei was the only one who was able to reach for his weapon in time.

What in heaven’s name was going on?

It was like a bolt of lightning had struck from a clear blue sky, upending their plans completely.

What made the least sense was the person who was attacking them - a man wearing very strange clothes and with the scarlet robe of the Rising Phoenix Sect wrapped around behind him like a cloak.

Li Wei couldn’t sense a drop of Qi from this person - which meant that he either had not started cultivation whatsoever, or that he was more than one major realm above him. Meaning that he was not simply a Golden Core cultivator, but a Nascent Soul cultivator!

The problem was that he couldn’t square either of those scenarios as even being remotely possible.

If this man had no cultivation, he couldn’t have had the courage to stand before them like this - and his works of strength clearly showed that he was no mortal.

On the other hand, it was basically impossible for him to be a Nascent Soul cultivator. What would someone of that kind of rank be doing out here - in the boonies? He knew for a fact that the Rising Phoenix sect’s local influence did not extend to beyond the Golden Core realm - for that matter, not even his own Diamond Fortune sect branch had more than one Golden Core member with them.

And a Golden Core cultivator would’ve definitely thought of this as far below their pay grade, let alone a Nascent Soul cultivator.

So what gives? The more he thought about the situation, the less it made sense to him.

Could this man simply have some sort of technique which stopped others from sensing his Qi? Li Wei had not heard of such a technique, but perhaps there was a hidden secret or a treasure that could do so.

How would such a technique work? Qi was the lifeblood of cultivators, to hide it was like trying to hide your own heartbeat.

Still, there were ways to slow down one’s heartbeat, were there not?

Even Li Wei could to some extent suppress his Qi if he so desired - it was not completely far-fetched to believe that one could take this a step further and block other’s from sensing one’s Qi, even if one was just at the Qi Refinement stage.

Or maybe there was another explanation.

Li Wei glanced towards the Initiate who he had targeted, and then back towards Tang Ze.

The two of them looked to be of the same age - though the issue with cultivators was that looks could be quite deceiving. The one he was fighting could be that Initiate’s great-great-great-grandfather for all he knew.

Following that line of thought, could it be that this Initiate was the descendant of some powerful lineage? And that was why a Nascent Soul cultivator, one of his ancestors, had come to his aide?

No, Li Wei thought, there was no way this Initiate was some kind of young master. He hadn’t even said ‘Junior, you dare!’ or ‘Courting death!’ even once, let alone threatened them with his parental heritage.

So, Li Wei came to the conclusion that his first idea was most likely the correct one.

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This man likely had some kind of technique that suppressed his Qi.

Building on from that thought though, and considering things rationally - he couldn’t keep doing that, now then could he?

Even if one learned to slow one’s heart rate during meditation, as some monks were able to do, when they went to exercise, surely it would increase again?

By that same logic, even if this man could suppress his Qi in a resting state, while fighting, he most certainly would have to loosen some of his control over the same.

And so, Li Wei pointed his weapon at his target - there was only one sure way to find out!

He charged - though before he could take even three steps forward, he found that the man was no longer standing in front of him, and that a blur had swept out his feet from under him.

The world did a somersault before Li Wei as he suddenly found his face firmly planted on the ground.

Roaring, he made to get up, before he heard something that chilled him to the bone.

“If you don’t give up - I’ll have to resort to my ultimate technique,” Tang Ze said. “[Monkey Stealing Peaches!]”

With that, anyone who was in Li Wei’s group who was still somewhat conscious instinctively crossed their legs.

“No - NO!” Li Wei said, all fire in his heart gone. He had heard of that demonic technique, and did not want to be on the receiving end of it.

More importantly, he had been keeping a close eye on his enemy when they had charged at each other, and he still hadn’t felt a drop of Qi from his enemy, something he would’ve expected if Li Wei’s earlier theory about him suppressing his Qi was true.

Either he had achieved such master over his Qi that he could keep it suppressed even while fighting - or that Li Wei had not even been enough of a challenge for him to lose control of his Qi.

Both of these possibilities was equally terrifying.

Meaning that the odds that this really was a Nascent Soul cultivator suddenly shot up!

Of course, Tang Ze did not know such a technique. He didn’t know a single technique actually - but in the many web novels he had read back on Earth, these words would have struck fear into many of the characters.

After all, even if his bluff did not work out- what did Tang Ze have to lose? He was clearly at an overwhelming advantage already, he just wanted to do something to end this fight quickly.

Tang Ze feared that the longer that they fought, the higher the chance was that they might notice some weakness of his that they would exploit. Without having a deeper understanding of how this world’s cultivation system worked and what kind of techniques he might end up running into, he would always have to err on the side of caution that his enemies might have some way to one-up him.

“Ah, please forgive me,” Li Wei said. While he had his pride, it was not worth risking his jewels. He then tried to give the Initiate a weak smile. “Such small things are just a way of rival sects to build friendship in a way, aren’t they, fellow taoist? My friends and I didn’t mean anything serious with this…”

Li Wei was cursing his fate internally however even as he smiled outwardly. This was supposed to be a simple task - why was there someone so strong here?

“You honestly cannot be trying to pull the ‘it was just a prank bro’ excuse here,” Tang Ze said. While Li Wei didn’t fully understand the context of what Tang Ze was saying, he did understand that what he was saying was not doing a good job at convincing these two.

“Do you really think we’re going to let you be after what you did to Jin Zhen?” Zhang Long asked, cracking his knuckles and giving him a death glare.

Tang Ze put two and two together to figure out what he was talking about. “N-No! Ah, we would never think of so much as touching a hair on her head!” There was a good reason for that - all sects had a good proportion of their members as women, and that proportion was slightly higher in the Diamond Dust sect compared to the others.

And so if it got out to the others that Li Wei had a habit of forcing himself onto vulnerable women, it was highly likely that a group of his senior sisters would find him one night and then decide to have their way with him - and not in the way that he would’ve liked (though maybe some of his junior brothers might’ve enjoyed even such treatment)!

That said, if maybe that girl had been a little more attractive he might’ve copped a feel - but that was the main disappointment he had encountered when taking her away!

The girl was homely to the extreme!

Was this supposed to be this man’s jade beauty? Didn’t the word ‘jade beauty’ imply that that woman was actually beautiful?

The woman they had kidnapped was extremely below-average in looks!

Li Wei had actually assumed that to be so riled up, she must’ve been this man’s sister instead rather than his lover (though he had heard that in some areas, the two were not necessarily mutually exclusive terms), but it looked like he had been wrong.

“Calm your heart,” Jin Zhen said, putting a comforting hand on Zhang Long’s shoulder. “They tied me up yes… but nothing like that happened…”

“That’s right!” Li Wei said. “I would never! Neither would any of my men! She looks way too much like a pig for us to even think about it, it would be like jumping into gutter because one couldn’t find a swimming pool-”

He did not get any further as Jin Zhen had grabbed a sword and nearly cut his head off with it.

“Ah, calm down just a moment!” Zhang Long said, the roles now reversed - with him trying to calm Jin Zhen down.

In his eagerness to prove that they had not done anything to the girl, Li Wei might’ve ended up saying a bit too much.

“Who do you think you’re calling ‘pig’ you swine! I will fill your sinuses with cow urine!” Jin Zhen screamed at him.

Li Wei hurriedly backed off.

However, now Tang Ze was faced with another problem that he felt was out of his depth to solve, simply because of a lack of experience on how this world worked.

What should they do with these people now that he had defeated them?

The character that Tang Ze was dressed as would’ve just told all of them to scram or handed them over to the authorities - after all, he was a paragon of justice. But just because Tang Ze was dressed as him- did that mean that he had to act like him too?

His innate sense for his talent hadn’t made some things clear, but did part of making an ‘accurate’ cosplay also include acting like the character? Would it make Tang Ze more powerful?

Well, he had gone to rescue this girl, and that didn’t seem to grant him any extra powers, but maybe his acting just needed to be better?

He would need to experiment on that little bit later.